Theatre Details

Playwright Jon Robin Baitz's previous writing credits include Brothers and Sisters and it this territory, adult children and their messy relationships with their aging parents he explores in 'Other Desert Cities.'

Set in a luxurious Palm Springs mansion in 2004 (a sublime glass and creamy living room set designed by Christina Smith), Brooke Lyman (Rebecca Davis) has returned from New York to spend the holiday with her parents.

Polly and Lyman Wyeth are old Hollywood royalty, after successful movie careers, Lyman became a leading member of the Republican party under Reagan, Polly the perfect politician's wife,

After a rocky six years since her successful first novel (depression, hospitalisation, divorce) Brooke has finally finished her second book but it's a memoir, exposing things no one else in the family want to talk about.

Brooke holds firm, she's determined to reveal the truth and despises her parents' establishment views. (While never explicitly discussed, the September 11 attacks and recently begun war in Iraq loom large).

But Brooke doesn't know the half of it.

In the middle of the play, Polly Lyman (Janet Andrewartha) asks:

"Why is it that children are allowed a sort of endless series of free passes in this life, you know, and we're expected to be the parents of children forever? This is a new phenomenon."

"Once I was an adult, all of my parents' indulgences ceased. You all want to stay children forever, doing whatever mischief you can think of."

"All you entitled children of the "me" generation."

That's the core of the play, the relationships between children should be independent and parents no longer responsible, and the impossibility of ever letting go.

Only real-life father and son actors Robert and Conrad Coleby, as Lyman and younger son Trip, are completely successful in maintaining their American accents, (Janet Andrewartha has a particularly difficult task as a character that grew up Jewish in Texas then moved to California)

This is a well paced, witty and surprising family drama with pleasing plot twist.

Other Desert Cities runs until 4 August 2013. The production will then tour to Brisbane from 10 August to 1 September 2013 at Queensland Performing Arts Centre.